Milton Resnick

 

 

The Mask of Benjamin Franklin, 1958

oil on canvas

63.5 x 48 in. (161.3 x 121.9 cm)

Gift of the Gordon F. Hampton Foundation, through Wesley K. Hampton, Roger K. Hampton, and Katharine H. Shenk

© The Estate of Milton Resnick, used with permission

 

 

Milton Resnick (Ukranian 1917–2004)

Born Rachmiel Resnick in 1911 in the Ukraine, Resnick immigrated to Cuba in 1922 leaving only six months later for the United States. He attended public school in Brooklyn where his named was changed by a teacher to Milton taken from his childhood nickname Milya. Although he has described his family as wealthy, his early years as an artist and student were not without struggle. In 1932 he enrolled in evening classes at the Pratt Institute for Commercial Art and one year later transfered to the American Artist’s School in New York. His father was ardently opposed to Resnick’s choice to become an artist believing art as an unsatisfactory career for his son. At 17 Resnick decided to leave home to pursue art full time living with little money, having to use discarded or left over art materials from other students.

Resnick became close friends with Ad Reinhardt a fellow classmate and in 1938 he met Willem de Kooning, with whom he held a friendship for several decades. In the same year, he also joined the WPA Federal Arts Project, belonging to the program for only one year. In 1940 Resnick was drafted into the Army and stopped painting for five years until he was discharged in 1945. After his service he spent three years in Paris looking to the traditions of European modernism and on his return to New York spent a short time studying with Hans Hoffman. Resnick’s paintings during this period reflected the gestured strokes and overall compositions of Abstract Expressionism.

The next few decades marked several transitions and changes both in Resnik's work and life. The 1950s and 1960s were a time filled with experimentation and interruptions. Resnick moved to a large loft space that dictated the new transition in his work. He started to produce increasingly large canvases. Over the next ten years Resnick traveled to Europe as well as taking on teaching positions and artist residencies. He stopped painting intermittently falling into a deep depression for several years. But it was the 1970’s that marked a new era of productivity for Resnick. He divided his time between several states, traveling to New Mexico, the mid-west and New York. He purchased a synagogue in 1976 that he refurbished as both his living space and studio where he stayed for the remainder of his career.

Over the following years, Resnick exhibited both the Max Hutchinson Gallery in New York (until 1982) and the Robert Miller Gallery. Resnick’s career spanned over 70 years with numerous group and solo exhibitions. He was the last surviving abstract expressionist of the New York School, whose work can be seen in the public collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Resnick had a major retrospective of his work in 1985 at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas. Resnick died in March of 2004.